Sofia didn’t say anything.
“Sit, sit,” he said, waving at the chair. “It won’t take long.”
Sofia considered her options. There weren’t many.
She glided forward, sank down into the chair.
Cabrera grinned like he had just accomplished something. “I have a bit of a problem, Sofia.”
“Is that so?”
“I don’t feel like you’ve been entirely—honest with me.”
Sofia thought about Marianella walking through the gates of the park, a panicking Eliana at her side. He tried.
Sofia didn’t move. “Excuse me?”
“About your”—Cabrera wriggled his fingers, as though conjuring up the right words—“associates. Your less-than-human associates.”
“Less than human?”
“Oh, don’t take it personally, my dear. You know what I mean. I was under the impression that we were partners. That you would keep me abreast of any unusual situations related to the denizens of the park.”
Sofia wrapped her fingers around the armchair and squeezed. “That was never part of our arrangement. I was under the impression that I was to be your reprogrammer,” Sofia said. “Which I’ve done. Unfailingly.”
Cabrera stared at her. “You aren’t human, so I can forgive you for not understanding, but a partnership with me is a partnership all the way through. You reprogram my robots, and you warn me of any potential problems from your kind.” He flashed her a grin. “I’ve certainly been keeping up my end of the bargain. Getting those items you requested, yes, but also keeping the park safe from city cullings—”
“You fucking liar. You know there was a culling—”
“That wasn’t the city. Outside my jurisdiction, I’m afraid.”
Sofia darkened. Marianella had seen one of Alejo Ortiz’s men that day. The AFF, then? Sofia hated the idea that another group of humans could force themselves into the park. She would have to investigate further.
“I had a problem a few weeks back, however. It happens. I thought I was successful in dispatching with it. My methods have never failed me before.”
“Your methods?” Sofia loosened her grip on the armrests. Her programming was well suited to making her seem to know less than she did.
“You don’t want to hear about this, do you?” Cabrera waved his hand. “You’re programmed to be a lady. I wouldn’t want to upset you.” Another cold glittering grin. “Suffice it to say, my problem is still very much alive. Plus, she left one of my best men bleeding in an alley last night, despite her small stature. Putting all that together, I’m forced to conclude that she must be one of yours.” He leaned forward, pressing his hands into the desk. “I’m really rather upset that you didn’t mention her, especially considering how high-profile she is. This is what I mean, about you not understanding our partnership.”
“Maybe your methods aren’t as successful as you think.” Sofia’s brain churned, wild with information and the memory of Marianella’s face.
Cabrera stared at Sofia for a moment. Then he laughed. “I locked her outside the dome, Sofia. That’s what I do. A human would have frozen to death in under an hour. Hardly enough time to find her way back inside. And yet.” He spread his hands over the desk. “Here we are. I saw her last night at a fund-raising gala for the agricultural domes. Now, why would a robot—or in this case, a cyborg—want to build an agricultural dome?”
“Why does a robot want anything?” Sofia folded her hands in her lap. Marianella was a fool, going to that party. She still had too much human in her.
“I have an answer to your question.” Cabrera tapped his fingers against the desk, one finger at a time, slowly and then quickly. The rhythm of a tango. Sofia watched his fingers and wanted to rip his hand from his arm.
“The answer to what?” The rhythm was already beating into her brain, luring the programming out.
“To what a robot wants.” Slow, slow. Quick, quick, slow. “It’s whatever a human wants. Isn’t that right, Sofia?”
Sofia closed her eyes. The tapping stopped. “You’re talking about Marianella Luna, I suppose? The woman on the advertisements?”
“Ah, so you do watch our television.”
Sofia opened her eyes. “She’s an heiress. An aristocrat. She’s not a cyborg.”
Cabrera tapped the rhythm out again. Slow, slow. Quick, quick, slow. “Aristocrats can’t survive the frozen desert.”
“Are you sure?” Sofia said. “Your sort certainly treats them as if they can.”
Cabrera paused, then roared with laughter. “Amusing, Sofia. Very amusing. I’ve never much gone in for that sort of thing myself. Landed gentry and the like. Too European. I’d rather find a new way of doing things.” He pushed back in his chair, turning toward the record player.
“No,” Sofia whispered.
“It’s just music, my dear.”
The record crackled and the music started, and Sofia flushed with relief because it was an old song but not one she’d ever been programmed to.
“See?” Cabrera smiled. “Just music. Now. Back to my proposition. Marianella Luna. I need her dead.”
“Then kill her.” The words were flat and tinny in her mouth.
“I can’t,” Cabrera snapped. “That’s my entire fucking point. I toss her out into the snow, and she shows up a few weeks later, not even missing any of her fingers or toes. She carries on like nothing happened. I only know one sort of creature that can survive in that type of weather.”
“A penguin?” Sofia said.
Cabrera fixed her with a cold stare. “Last night I sent Diego to shoot her in the heart. Even cyborgs have hearts. But she left him bruised and bleeding on the cement. Then disappeared.” He paused. “Do you know where she ran off to?”
“No.”
The music crackled in the background.
“I thought you might say that.” Cabrera reached over and lifted the needle and then dropped it.
Music exploded in Sofia’s thoughts, and then her thoughts didn’t belong to her anymore.
It was “Yo Soy La Morocha,” and it shot desire through her like a poison. Her whole body was burning, and when she looked at the man behind the desk, with his cold smile, she saw only a client.
“What would you like me to do?” she said sweetly.
The room was too hot. She began to undress, unbuttoning her blouse, slipping off her shoes. She unrolled her stockings, pulled them off one by one. The client stared at her, unmoving. She wondered if she had displeased him in some way.
“What would you like me to do?” she asked.
The client reached over and pulled up the record needle.
The silence was beautiful and terrible. Sofia gasped and pulled her blouse closed. Rage coursed through her.
“I’ll kill you,” she hissed.
“No,” Cabrera said. “You’ll kill her. Marianella Luna. Kill the human in her and then get that little human freak who lives with you to dismantle the rest of her. Otherwise—” He dropped the needle, and the music came back in and Sofia forgot herself, desire burning her up from the inside.
Silence again.
“Do you understand?”
Sofia glared at him, fury hot inside her.
“This should be easy for you, shouldn’t it, my dear? Just imagine she’s all human.” He dropped the needle, and the music prickled over her skin and she stood up and shimmied out of her skirt.
Back to silence.
“Do you understand?” Cabrera said.
Sofia felt whiplashed, slung back and forth between independence and slavery. Her clothes lay in puddles around her. Cabrera still held the needle, the record still spun in slow treacherous circles, like a shark swimming around and around a sinking boat.
“I will always have this,” Cabrera said lightly. “You do realize that, corr
ect?”
Sofia didn’t answer.
“I’m actually giving you a choice,” he went on. “You like that, don’t you? Thinking you have a choice. Would you like to hear what that choice is?”
Sofia gathered up her skirt and stockings, her arms shaking.
“Would you?”
“Yes,” she said, grinding her teeth together until they sparked inside her head.
“You leave my office and you find her in this icebox we call a city and you kill her for me. And everything carries on the way it was before. That’s option A. Option B is you leave my office and you don’t do anything and I use my secret weapon here”—he nodded at the record player—“to get you nice and compliant so that one of my engineers can reprogram a new song into your pretty little robot brain, a song that’ll force you to kill her. That’s your choice.”
He dropped the needle again, only this time the music was safe. It didn’t transmit any hidden codes.
Cabrera looked at Sofia. She pulled her clothes to her chest, trying to cover her bare skin. The room was no longer too hot, but too cold. Even though Sofia didn’t feel the cold.
“Well?” said Cabrera. “Which option do you choose?”
Sofia considered her options, robotically, one by one. She considered every possible angle. Cabrera was wrong, as he so often was—he had given her more than two choices. Because he didn’t realize how adept she was at obfuscation.
“I’ll kill her,” Sofia said.
Cabrera smiled.
* * * *
Sofia rapped on Marianella’s bedroom door without stopping, a bang, bang, bang that no human could manage without hurting herself. She was numb—from the music, from Cabrera’s threat. She’d either be a murderer or a murder weapon.
No. No. She banged harder on Marianella’s door. No human would ever tell her what to do again.
Shuffled footsteps. Sofia stopped knocking, and the door swung open. Marianella stared at her. She looked exhausted, her clothing rumpled and her eyes ringed in dark circles.
“Sofia?” she said in a slurred voice, like she’d been sleeping.
“I need to speak with you.” Sofia didn’t wait for an answer; she pushed past Marianella into the dim bedroom. “It’s about Ignacio Cabrera.”
The door swung shut.
“What about him?” Marianella’s voice had lost the blur of sleep; it was strained now, nervous. “My God, Sofia, what do you know?” She stared at her. “You went to see him, didn’t you? Just now?” She dug her hand into her forehead like she had a headache. “Why? I told you, Alejo and I know how to handle—”
Sofia grabbed both of Marianella’s hands and squeezed them tight. Marianella looked up, her eyes shiny with tears, and the sight of them made Sofia hurt inside.
“He called me over,” Sofia said, “for a meeting. I had to go. That’s the nature of my arrangement. And he—” She wasn’t sure she would be able to say it. Not now, not looking at Marianella straight on.
Marianella always did that to her.
“What?” Marianella cried. “What is it?”
“We have a problem,” Sofia said carefully.
Marianella’s eyes went wide and scared. “He wants you to kill me.”
“Yes.” Sofia squeezed Marianella’s hands.
Marianella sucked in a deep breath, and that act of breathing made Sofia aware of how vulnerable Marianella was, if you knew the right places to stab, to hit, to dismantle.
Which Sofia did.
Silence filled the bedroom, thick and choking. And when Marianella broke it, she said exactly what Sofia didn’t want to hear.
“Did he program you?” Marianella’s voice was flat. Empty.
Sofia closed her eyes. It was a fair question—she was still programmable—and she couldn’t begrudge Marianella asking it. But it hurt anyway, a hurt like coming out of the music.
“No.”
Marianella sighed with relief, a long whoosh of air that hurt Sofia even more.
“He gave me the option of doing it on my own first.”
“Are you going to?”
“No, of course not.”
Marianella closed her eyes, and her lips moved silently, the first lines of the Hail Mary.
“You didn’t think I was going to kill you, did you? I mean, really?” Sofia reached out, tentatively, and pressed her hand against the side of Marianella’s face. Marianella leaned into her touch, sighing, and with that, Sofia stretched her arm around Marianella’s shoulder and drew her close. She wanted to feel the warmth and softness of her body, wanted to feel that blood pumping through Marianella’s veins. It was the strangest sort of comfort.
“I don’t know what I think, Sofia.” Marianella laid her head on Sofia’s shoulder. “I just— How could you do it?” she asked. “How could you work for that—that monster?” She turned her head just enough that her hair brushed across Sofia’s shoulder. “You may not care that he kills humans, but he just asked you to kill a cyborg. And what do you say about that?”
“I had to work with him,” Sofia said. “It’s part of my plan.”
“Your plan, your plan!” Marianella pulled away, whirled to face her. “You’re helping Ignacio Cabrera, the man responsible for starving half of Hope City, just so Araceli can mess around with your programming?”
“I’m helping Cabrera so I can be free.” Sofia’s anger flared. “Which is a concept you don’t understand because you’ve always had it.”
“Freedom?” Marianella took a step backward. “You think I’ve always had freedom?”
“No one can program you.” The heat rose in Sofia’s words. “No one can control you with music and a record player. So yes, I have helped Ignacio Cabrera just so I can be free.”
“I live in fear every day that someone will discover my nature,” Marianella said, her voice low and cold. “The only freedom I have comes from pretending to be human.”
“Which you do so well.” Sofia glared at her. “You pretend to be human because you want to be human. That’s why you built that dome with Alejo Ortiz. You just want to pretend.”
“I’m not pretending anything.” Marianella’s cheeks flushed pink. “I just understand that true freedom comes from self-sufficiency, not from death and terror.”
“I don’t want death.” Sofia laughed. “I just want them gone. They have no business living in this climate. They can’t even go outside! We can. Your dome is just forcing them into something they’re not. I’m saying they should go back to where they’re suited and leave the ice to us.”
She stared at Marianella when she finished, daring her to protest. It was so frustrating how Marianella played at being human. As if being human were the only way to survive in this world.
“Your plan isn’t going to work,” said Marianella. She brushed one hand over her hair. The pink had gone out of her cheeks, and she took a deep breath. “You understand that, right? Independence—that’s how we create a place for robots. A place for robots and humans to live side by side.”
“You don’t really think Alejo’s going to let you do that, do you?”
Marianella ignored the question. “The Independents can negotiate terms in a way you can’t. What’s to stop the mainland from bombing the city once you’ve gotten rid of the humans?”
“The atomic plants. They aren’t that stupid.”
Marianella sighed.
“But we are smarter than them,” Sofia said. “Always one step ahead.”
Marianella laughed sharply. “They’ve got power. They control everything, the city and the icebreakers and—” She stopped.
“You were going to say me, weren’t you? They control me?”
Marianella looked down at her hands.
“It’s all right.” It wasn’t. “You can say it. We both know it’s true. But it won’t be for long.”
Sofia reached over and took Marianella’s hand, and Marianella looked up at her. “Once I’m free, I’ll be on equal footing with them. And that’s when it will happen.”
Sofia watched Marianella’s face. She had been designed, long ago, to read human expressions, and Marianella’s expressions were all so human, even when she tried to wear a mask. And Sofia saw doubt flicker across Marianella’s features. Doubt, curiosity. Admiration.
“I’m not going to help you,” Marianella said softly.
That was the end of it. Years of friendship with Marianella told Sofia that much. She reached up and cupped Marianella’s face.
“Fine,” she said. “But I want you to promise me that you won’t leave the park until Ignacio is dealt with. I’ll have the maintenance drones monitor the gates. That’s the safest way.”
“Alejo’s going to pay him off. As soon as he’s struck a deal, I’ll let you know.”
Sofia scowled. “I wouldn’t put all my faith in the goodwill of Ignacio Cabrera. I’m going to keep you safe. Cabrera threatened to program me, but he won’t be able to.” She dropped her hand. “We don’t have all the equipment yet, but Araceli can make do.”
Marianella frowned. “Don’t do anything stupid, Sofia.”
“I’m a robot,” Sofia said. “I’m incapable of doing something stupid.”
* * * *
Sofia left Marianella’s room and went looking for Araceli. She wasn’t in the workshop, but Sofia found her in the little snow cottage she called home, eating a sandwich and tinkering with a maintenance drone that had broken down the day before. The television was tuned to some mainland game show. Araceli glanced up and set down her soldering iron when Sofia walked in.
“You never knock,” she sighed.
Sofia sat down on the sofa beside her and looked at the maintenance drone. “It’s my park.”
Araceli laughed. “I suppose it is.” She switched off the television and drew a plastic tarp over the drone. “So what can I help you with? I’ve been reinforcing the security feeds after—”
“I know. Thank you.” Sofia kept staring at the drone. “It’s not about that. It’s about—it’s about my reprogramming.”